he's not really saying that streamers don't pay for their games in the sense that they don't buy them, he's saying they don't pay for a license for the use of their games in other forms of copyrightable material that streamers derive profit from
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Creative Director at Typhoon Studios, AC3 & FC4: "streamers should be paying the developers and publishers of the games they stream"
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he's not really saying that streamers don't pay for their games in the sense that they don't buy them, he's saying they don't pay for a license for the use of their games in other forms of copyrightable material that streamers derive profit from
Read the part of your second quote where it is characterized as an "open question".
Read the part where he still says he doubts they'd win. Good lord.
Publishers wouldn't give out free keys to streamers or pay them directly to play their games if they weren't getting anything out of it.
Some of you guys just don't understand the reach and influence streamers have on game sales. Ask the Among Us devs if they think twitch hurt them.
Sure but music and gameplay are entirely different things. What streamers do would most likely be considered transformative and thus permitted under fair use.
I meant as in people saying they pirated to "try before they buy" due to lack of demos as justification for pirating. Not the people who just pirate games to have them.
Except literally this is what advertising something is. This is what demoing is. Companies spend sometimes literally just as much or more advertising something as making it. Advertisement and market presence are very valuable. You absolutely do get something out of advertising which is why so much is spent on it. If you can get free advertising, which streaming has proven to be, then any company will go for it.
This is why companies will PAY STREAMERS to play their game because crazy I know, but exposure absolutely is valuable.
You can't say the creator gets nothing when creators regularly pay sometimes more than what they paid to make something on the same thing.
Again, there is a reason why companies don't change to change this status quo. Because they ARE getting something out of it.
To say they are getting nothing is dishonest. Companies don't spend literally millions of dollars on "nothing." You have to consider that in this conversation.
They don't do that because it's not a requirement by law for them to do so.
Look, it's simple. All you have to do for me to buy your game is to have a free demo that contains 90% of the game, pay streamers to play it, release it completely for free, have an optional premium version collectors edition that does not affect gameplay at all and only affects cosmetics, and lack any microtransactions or additional revenue generators, and have an above 90 on metacritic. That's it.
No, it's not called buying the game. Buying the game doesn't give you the license to stream it in most cases.
Not really. Under the current laws that exist, and the current opinions of IP lawyers in this space, they don't think that its enough to win a case over, and therefore establish the precedent.
Head @ YouTube Gaming (although Google and YT are owned by Alphabet, they are still independent of each other)
So? Lawyers are wrong about their estimates of likelihood of success all the time, particularly in the context of "open questions". Indeed, the very definition of an open question is one in which enough lawyers believe there is enough uncertainty that the question could plausibly be answered in either direction.
This is all only semi-relevant, however, as your strategy throughout this whole thread has been to portray the issue as decided by the existing jurisprudence, which is just factually wrong. Quoting lawyers saying "I think it will be answered this way" has no bearing on whether a court case out of some binding authority exists, which it doesn't.
Ya, it's really convenient. A lot of games, even if they play great and would be looked down upon here because gameplay is paramount, I'll watch. A lot of times I don't want to play. I just want see the story.
It's not an argument in favor or against revenue sharing. I post these casual takes occasionally because often on this forum I feel like it's an echo chamber of enthusiast and people get really surprised when faced with people that aren't immersed in the culture. I'm casual for this forum. I'm enthusiast compared to most. I used to breed for IV's in Pokemon. This persons channel which is primarily playthroughs with no commentary. 2.32M subscribers. Some of the videos have millions of views and if this channels videos were monetized by rights holders, I don't think people here would cause an uproar. For platforms like Youtube and Twitch, it's not viable to sift through case by case whether something is deemed acceptable or not, it'll be automated and up to the uploader/streamer to appeal any offense
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I don't think streaming games will ever stop. What twitter guy said won't happen individual streamer to rights holder. But something like rights holders being paid out by Youtube and Twitch like rights holders get paid out by Youtube now, I can see happening, it'll be a behind the scenes change that would be largely transparent to the consumer. Just one major publisher needs to get the ball rolling (take the temporary PR hit in online communities) on pushing for a content id system in place on twitch and youtube for video games then the rest will use eventually when a content id system is in place. If the above channels videos gets monetized by rights holders, I imagine most gaming channels would get monetized by rights holder and it'll be up to the one using the copyrighted work to appeal which I know will anger a fair amount of people
Ask publishers. At any point they could make a deal with twitch or bring it to court.
I dunno, the music industry is a tenth of the gaming market and peaked in 2000. Their revenue halved in a few years and only recently they got growing sales again.
You know what falls into the growth period? STREAMING and FREE content on Video sites.
And IP lawyers who tend to have, idk, studied and be licenses attorneys in these fields, are usually more reliable at gauging the legality of these things than Era posters, who have consistently lacked any sources to back up these ridiculous and misinformed claims about how DMCA and licensing works.
It being an open question does not void the fact that the guy going "I want to argue this case" is also saying "I doubt we'd win," and I would probably guess that his basis for the doubt is based on the existing precedent and the way the law is written.
He's saying they don't pay to stream them. Because *using his logic* they are using the games to make money. He's talking about paying for use licenses.
Especially when you have major publishers like EA literally paying million of dollars to streamers to play their games at launch. That happens across the board with a lot of major releases now every month.
This idea that nobody has ever stopped to think about this until some guy on Twitter mentioned it is insane.
Gaming ERA does have a real weird litigation, copyright, and corporation soft spot though.
Whoever is playing, they are performing what the developers made and allowed possible, so none of it is transformative.
I'm very specifically talking about the revenue generated for the streamer by the streamer using content the streamer did not create NOT going to the creator. I'm not saying the creator get's "nothing" out of the deal. I'm saying they didn't give PERMISSION to have someone do "free advertising". The act of a creator going after a streamer over this being a dumb financial decision does not forfeit the rights of the content creator!
I don't get why people are twisting all this around as some sort of "gotcha".
Dumb thread.
Companies BEG streamers to play their games on stream. There's an entire site dedicated to "hey are you a streamer? As long as you have this much of a following, here's some free games"
The video game industry is just different ... man.
That's not a settled thing at all, I'm sure some IP lawyers think that but it's not a mass consensus like you are suggesting.
If companies lost money from streaming they would ban their games from being streamed.
however they do not because the engagement is very valuable. when a new release comes companies Pay streamers to play their games, some games became hits because streamers discovered them and played them while otherwise wouldn't be successful.
check Ubisoft when they release their games the ads they do. even Ea recently paid streamers to play squadrons.
however they do not because the engagement is very valuable. when a new release comes companies Pay streamers to play their games, some games became hits because streamers discovered them and played them while otherwise wouldn't be successful.
check Ubisoft when they release their games the ads they do. even Ea recently paid streamers to play squadrons.
I imagine sometime down the line a game will come with an EULA that explicitly forbids streaming it and sell a separate streaming license, but that would surely be a unique occurrence. Whatever money there is in streaming games is pretty clearly locked behind the relative freedom of the current system, once any rightsholder attempts to crack down on the use of their product the money will disappear as content producers would leave and the audiences with them, so any monetary gains would most likely be very short lived while totally destroying all of the intangible benefits they receive. It might have been possible to impose a licensing system like this years ago, when streaming was young, but it's too late now for any company to attempt to implement it.
The streamer is literally transforming the experience. What are you talking about. That's literally why people watch X streamer.
It doesn't have to be a settled thing. Until someone challenges Nintendo in court on whether their Let's Play stream is fair use or not, the precedent of Nintendo claiming they own all the copyright of the works, including the broadcasting of their game to an audience via Twitch is going to continue to hold up and be processed as normal.
But you CAN'T just very specifically talk about that. You said they get nothing, and that is wrong. Whether or not they wanted it doesn't change that. And plus you're making this about a developer wanting to avoid getting something for free that companies regularly pay millions of dollars for because it's so valuable? You're talking about a really dumb hypothetical.
Most developers aren't dumb enough to want to exempt themselves from the free advertising streaming provides. So trying to bring up whether they should be able to isn't going to win over a lot of people to your argument. Why would anyone care about the ability to do something that stupid?
The internet is reminding me this is the same guy who claimed game journalists were racist against the west because they gave Japanese games too much of a pass for the "literal gibberish" plots they had (himself sort of being racist about it).
So he just seems like a bad take machine.
So he just seems like a bad take machine.
I'm not saying to base your views on whether something is legal on ERA posters, I'm saying don't falsely represent the state of the law to make a point because doing so makes you look ignorant and arrogant. The truth is very straightforward: It's an open question with opinions on both sides of what the outcome of a hypothetical case might be.
Your second statement indicates a very idealistic view of the law. Cases are not decided based on solely on existing precedent and the way the law is written, and any decent lawyer is going to incorporate a much more expansive view of the factors influencing the likelihood of success in a given case in their analysis.
Considering the reaction from other tech/game people it's clear this Hutchinson guy's opinion is quite the outlier. Everyone else seems to know how their bread is buttered.
I don't know that I've ever bought a game JUST because my favorite streamer played a game, but more than once, I've been introduced to a game I didn't know existed and then tried it out because I watched it on stream.
Fall Guys, Among Us and Genshin Impact are all as big as they are because of streamers.
What if the player is giving live critique of the game? Since reviews and critique *are* covered under fair use and all...
This discussion shouldn't be centered around what's technically legal or not legal - it should be around what's right for modern media and technologies.
And those companies are free to set the cost of a streaming license to $0 if they so choose. Others should be able to set the price higher than that if they want.
Transformative is what makes it possibly fall under the guise of fair use, and thus a "legal" public performance.
"Shit Nintendo says" is not "precedent".
You've also got the obligations in property law disputes reversed. My self-proclaimed right to do something is king unless and until someone challenges it. This is actually a major aspect of copyright enforcement and is one of the biggest reasons why companies err on the side of caution when it comes to use of their property.
Sure, but what's being suggested by the tweet in the OP is not at all a requirement of the law. You keep playing this "appeal to authority" card by making broad statements about what IP attorneys supposedly believe as if you are the only one who knows anything about copyright law on this forum, particularly in regards to media usage. You're not. Nintendo can claim whatever it wants, but they don't make decisions about the law.
This is begging the question: you've answered my question about why something is the standard by telling me that it is the standard.
When you've only got one card in your hand...
I'm 99% sure everyone talking about the legal/fair use angle here is wrong or misleading, and I strongly encourage people to not repeat legal advice you find on the internet, especially around IP as it's very, very complicated and tends to vary dramatically by domain.
What's worse is that it's completely irrelevant. As demonstrated many times historically, if a developer doesn't want their game to be streamed, they have many tools to enforce that.
The fact that developers very rarely do that speaks for itself.
What's worse is that it's completely irrelevant. As demonstrated many times historically, if a developer doesn't want their game to be streamed, they have many tools to enforce that.
The fact that developers very rarely do that speaks for itself.
I mean it depends on the price for the licencing. If it's not too much then creators wont leave. Some Pubs tried it again and again and the backlash from the community was always big. Its worth it for mp games and that are the only games where streamer get money for playing it.
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